


Burn

by himitsutsubasa



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:22:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himitsutsubasa/pseuds/himitsutsubasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you going to apologize?”</p><p>Peter turned to Malia. “For what?”</p><p>“If that happened to me, you’d feel the same, wouldn’t you?” </p><p>Peter stopped functioning for a moment. Malia stared out the window, adamantly not looking at him. He could hear her heart beat stutter a little, as she awaited his reply.  </p><p>“Yeah, baby, I would.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

The dust settled and the kids collapsed in an exhausted heap. Chris glanced over to the group and saw what looked like Stiles’ hand sticking out of the pile and a dark head that he assumed belonged to Scott haphazardly propping it up. Kira was somewhere in there, but he wasn’t sure where considering her long hair made it almost impossible to locate the rest of her. Malia must have been tangled in with Kira because he wasn’t sure if she was even in the pile until he heard her complaining in stress-broken English. Lydia was too poised to be included in the general mess, instead sitting like a queen on top of them all.

Even Derek was somehow included. He appeared to be the base of the puppy pile, if the low level and tired growling was anything to go by.

Chris breathed a sigh of relief.

Not a single one dead and from the fact that no one was crying bloody murder, no blood either. Why couldn’t the villain of the week always be a dragon?

Well, it was a good thing it wasn’t always a dragon considering the fire warnings popping up in California, but that meant that it wasn’t always a Chinese girl who got lost in the woods during a camping trip. Really they would not have their general problems if it was always as easy as a girl who got lost in the woods during a camping trip.

Chris had made sure she got back to her campsite and car, putting the kids in charge of making sure the magical fires she set would be put out. It was a blessing to have an Emissary among them.

Chris felt the visceral heat of a glare boring into the back of his head. From behind, the harsh, but calming breathing of a familiar set of lungs reached his ears. He turned to Peter and sighed.

The wolf huffed a little, apparently more than just passingly annoyed. “I never asked for you to protect me.”

The dragon girl hadn’t been in control of her powers yet and had almost torched them all.  He was sure that Peter knew that, but how to make sure Peter understood the significance of that was a different matter. Chris rubbed the bridge of his nose, grimacing a little as the smell of burnt wood and hair reached his nose.

“I feel responsible for you, Hale.” The wolf’s eyes flashed electric blue and murderous. Chris pinched the bridge of his nose even tighter. Peter’s nose twitched, the only sign of disdain on his otherwise stony face.

“I don’t want you to feel responsible for me, Argent.”

“Yeah, well, I never wanted to,” Chris snapped.

The hunter took a deep breath and composed himself. He pushed the wolf back a step, stepping into the sacred personal space bubble Peter formed. “But I do, so you better deal with it.”

A whistle emitted from the pile. Even, Lydia had paused in her attentions to her phone to observe.

Peter grimaced as if the idea physically pained him. Considering the family history, maybe it did. “Look, I can deal with the magical bullshit. So why don’t you go home and polish your bow?”

“It didn’t look like you could deal with it today.”

“She was calming down until you showed up.” The wolf snarled. “Contrary to what you may believe, people actually trust me.”

“Well, I guess they’ve never met you.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them and he has regrets. So many regrets.

Peter’s eyes flashed an icy blue and he growled, a deep rumble in his throat. “Fuck you, Argent. At least people have the guts to say it to my face.”

“Can’t you just accept it?”

“No.”

“Why are you always so difficult?”

“Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Don’t you have better things to do than hang out with kids?”

Low blow, Argent.

Peter smirked, crossed his arms across his chest. “At least I’m not trailing after a band to kids like a lost puppy.”

“That’s rich coming from you. Sometimes I wonder what’s your full time occupation. Peter Hale, creeper?” He was just digging himself into a deeper hole, wasn’t he?

“You are a fucking asshole, Argent, you know that?”

“Don’t you have to be a role model for your daughter?”

“At least I still have my daughter.”

Oh, no. Chris felt his hands ball into fists and the surge of intent in his veins.  No, he was not going to skin a wolf alive. He was going to calm down and leave, like Allison always told him to do. He was going to go the range and shoot the fuck out of every target until he ran out of ammo. He was not going to kill another wolf, no matter how insensitive that wolf was.

“Fuck you.”

The color drained out of Peter’s face and Chris felt the bitter tang of a victory on his tongue as he stalked towards his car.

“Chris.”

“Fuck you. I should have let her torch you.”

* * *

Peter ran his hands over his goatee. He fucked up. To put it lightly, he fucked up. He fucked up really badly and he had to fix it. Damn it, even Stiles, always morally ambiguous Stiles, looked at him like there was no hope for his soul. He made Stiles give him that look; that was a new low.

“Peter... I mean Dad?”

Peter adjusted his hands on the wheel and responded. “What is it, Malia?”

“That man…”

“The hunter?”

“Yeah… why did he smell like pain?” Poor, sweet Malia. She had looked so confused the entire time. Peter still had a hard time thinking that she was part of him, of him. And, she knew nothing about the entire fuck up that was his life and what he did. She loved him, in the Peter Hale fashion that was to be expected, and trusted him and always looked so lost.

“His daughter died.”

A small keening noise sounded from her throat as he made a sharp turn. She still wasn’t used to the way cars moved. “How?”

“She was stabbed, defending wolves.”

Malia went silent for a moment and Peter wondered what she was thinking about. Had she seen that before? A hunter ripping apart a darling lamb and tearing out the guts? Had she seen the death of a poor innocent? Had she been the killer? He really knew so little about her.

And she was his. He was pathetic. Really pathetic.

“How old was she?”

“Your age, a little older.”

She paused no doubt putting the pieces together like the little genius she was. She probably figured out that the pack had loved Allison with all their hearts, that their hearts had actually stuttered when he said those damning words. She probably figured out that Scott McCall had stuttered the loudest, and the grief that wafted off of him was the strongest. If only Isaac was there for that little failure. The child would have tried to kill Peter for Chris.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Are you going to apologize?”

Peter took his eyes off the road to look at her. She looked out the window; her brows furrowed and her face innocently betrayed her bitter thoughts never mind the regret that emanated from her pores.

“For what?”

“If that happened to me, you’d feel the same, wouldn’t you?” Peter stopped functioning for a moment.

“Yeah, baby, I would.”

The worst part was that the words weren’t even a lie. He had really fucked up.

* * *

“Argent.” Peter stormed up to the door and knocked for the fifth time in the past few minutes. “Come on. Let me in.”

“Chris?” He let his claws scratch at the door a little. He wasn’t above using property damage to draw a man out. No response.

“Keep it quiet out there!” Peter swiveled around. The elderly lady who lived next door had a shot gun pointed at him. Oh, well, that sucked.

“Is he home?” Peter put his hands up and gave his most disarming smile. She unlocked the safety.

Well, shit.

“No. Shut up and go away.” Peter nodded, backing slowly down the steps and to his car. So, he would have to rewrite the plan. Starting with finding out where Argent went other than his house.

When he got there, she pointed the muzzle down and started back inside. “Barking like a dog. Strangers here at all hours.”

“Strangers?” Peter started forward, putting his hands up again as she pointed the gun.

He eyed it nervously. It wasn’t above Argent to give his neighbors special bullets to take out anything furry that might try to approach his house. “Ma’am, you mentioned strangers?”

“Yeah, young folks like you, all dressed up in black. Trouble, I say. Anyone without a family around your age must have something wrong with them.” Peter took a little offense to that. Okay, he had Malia and Derek, which was a situational thing, so he didn’t have a shoe to throw, but Chris was a pretty good guy under the daddy issues, and murderous rage, and gun fetish. Peter could live with the gun fetish actually.

“When I was your age, I had three babies already.” Peter kept the snark internal because the woman had a shot gun and, okay, when was that? Post-WWII? Everyone had three kids then. The old woman went on, “Poor thing about this Argent fella though, all torn up since his wife and daughter died, should go looking for a nice girl.”

“Thank you.” Yeah, even the nameless neighbors make him feel guilty. He really should stop this feeling thing he’s doing. It must be bad for his heart.

The old woman gives him a sage nod and waves him off. “You go telling him now, if you find him.”

Well, that “if” wasn’t ominous at all. 

* * *

“Where are the wolves?”

Chris coughed up a little more blood. These guys really knew nothing about torture. They forgot to put a sock in his mouth to prevent him from biting off his tongue. If he did, then where would they all be? Information free, that was for sure.

“What wolves?” He tried for a smile that quickly turned into a grimace as a twenty-something woman stabbed him in the shoulder. Damn, okay, these people were not fucking around and they really didn’t know how to treat a guest, let alone a fellow hunter. At least she left the knife in to stop the bleeding and missed all major blood vessels.

She hissed into his ear. “You fucking smell like a ‘were’, Argent. You must be getting soft on us.”

“I must be. I only took down five of your men. Where are they by the way?”

Ouch. That was a bruised, maybe cracked, rib.

“Costa, we have tracks.” A small man, one he recognized from the first attack that got him off his fucking door step, waved a tablet. Informatics? Chris was starting to miss the good old days, when hunting was all about detective work, gathering evidence and finding absolute proof. Kids these days were using data that pointed in one direction but could be easily explained away to hunt innocent people. He’d heard about the massacre in New Mexico. He was not an idiot or a luddite; he just liked it more when hunting was less a “shoot all things” genocide and more a strategic game that let the prey fight for truth.

“I will deal with you later.” Her heels, another sign of this new generation of hunters, clacked as she walked away. Chris remembered teaching Allison to walk quietly barefoot, with socks, in tennis shoes, then watched her slink silently in heels on every surface they could get their feet on, including the roof.

What kind of hunter didn’t learn to walk silently at all times? The arrogant kind.

A cough echoed from behind and around the truly cliché warehouse. Chris craned his neck to get a better look.

“Hale?”

Peter slunk up to the table, silent and careful, like the floor was lined with bombs. Concrete floor was unlikely, but it was fresh enough concrete to make one worry. Peter purred into the handcuffs that kept him tied, spread eagled and angled, to a rack. “How the tables have turned.”

“Get the hell out of here.” They’re hunting you doesn’t seem like a thing he needs to say. It’s pretty self-evident.

Peter snapped one of the links, setting Chris’ left hand, and dominant if anyone really paid attention, free while sliding a key into his palm.

“Not without my favorite hunter.”

The ever ominous creaking of the door echoed around the room and Chris really wondered if these people were hunters or cartoon villains because who did that anymore? Greased, and therefore silent, hinges were the best kind of hinges.

Costa strutted, much to Peter’s apparent amusement because he, like Chris, likes the classics, in. Her red lips are pursed into a pout and she laughs before pointing an accusing finger at the two of them. “So you’re fucking a wolf. I never pegged you for a dog fucker or a faggot.”

“Watch your mouth. This wolf has claws and great lawyers.” Peter was almost laughing. He looked perfectly serious, but Chris saw the way his jaw tensed up and relaxed. He was laughing so loudly internally.

Costa apparently didn’t take sass well; bad career choice considering that werewolves had a sassy gene embedded in them somewhere. “What would Victoria say? Your daughter?”

Her lips curled into a snarl that looked like the monsters she was supposed to hunt. “I forgot. She was a wolf fucker too, just like your sister.”

Chris broke one of handcuffs around his ankle, again amateur work, in his rush forward if the sound of cracking wood was anything to go by. He felt his muscles tense in his neck and the familiar dead flat expression fall on his face.

“Don’t talk about Allison that way. She was nothing like Kate.”

Costa cackled, actually cackled like a cartoon witch, and crowed, “You’re just a family of wolf fuckers. No wonder you’re all dead. Well, almost.”

Derek, the sassy bastard, stepped into the room, appearing from the shadows like it was a normal occurrence, and asked, “I suppose you’d call us fashionably late?”

Then Stiles hit one of the hunters with a baseball bat. 

* * *

“You owe me a trip to the mall.” Lydia examined her chipped nail with a disdain. She had personally taken down Costa. It might have had a little to do with the fact that the woman looked like a cheap copy of Lydia's style and that had to be rectified at all costs, but Peter wasn’t going to voice that opinion out loud. He actually wanted to live.

“I owe you much more than that.”

She flipped her hair back. “I know. I’m being generous.” And, stalked away like she single-handedly took down trained hunters on a weekly basis, and maybe, yeah, that was a depressing reality to face.

Malia tackled his side, burying her nose into his shirt. “Well, I’m not. We are going camping. No arguments.”

Peter felt her squeeze a little tighter and he felt a little guilt. He’d scared her, hadn’t he? He’d promised her that that wasn’t going to happen as long as he was sane and functioning.

“Yes, sweetie.”

“Good.” She pried Stiles off of Derek, who was acting like a petulant child, werewolf healing aside, over getting a cut cleaned. “Come on, Stiles. Derek’s a baby and we have a project due tomorrow that needs lava.”

He watched his nephew get a stricken look on his face, because Peter knew all about the lava incident that ruined Derek’s kitchen last week, before following them out. Peter followed and hoped Malia would be alright with either Derek, or more likely Stiles since Derek kept forgetting his car in shady neighborhoods, driving her home. 

* * *

Chris rubbed his wrists as the kids emptied out of the warehouse. Peter had hugged Malia, walking her out with the rest.

What had it meant that Peter knew he was left-dominant when he tried so hard to hide it? Did it mean anything at all?

Peter reappeared in the door way, waving. “You’re riding with me, if you don’t mind.”

Chris nodded. It would be a long road, but he had a pack and a home.

He’d figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote this, all I could imagine was everything being bad and horrible and worse. I took almost nothing and ran with it. (I realized they became their own characters partway through, not poor copies of the originals. I'm sorry that they aren't up to the Argent-Hale standard.)


End file.
